Incredible Hulk Masterworks Vol. 2 Regular Edition Cover

Vol. 39: Incredible Hulk Variant Edition Cover

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THE INCREDIBLE HULK: ENGINE OF DESTRUCTION
An INCREDIBLE HULK of a site! Oodles of information about the green skinned monster!

OFFICIAL HULK MOVIE SITE
Tons of information from the official Universal Pictures site!

HULK TV SERIES HOME PAGE
I was angry for a long time, and nobody liked me when I was angry. But then I found this page, with tons of space devoted to the TV show starring Bill Bixby, and I have learned to control my anger.

On Sale: MASTERWORKS LIST

The only super-hero soap opera in all of comicdom!

That was the bombastic blurb on the splash page of the Hulk's half of Tales to Astonish #64. Now, when you think of Hulk, you think of larger than life monster mayhem, super-sized panels of furiously flyin' fisticuffs, and gamma-irradiated madcap action! But soap operas? You mean, the kind of action where little old ladies across the country pull their hankies out when two-timing lovers return from the dead, long-lost children pop up from out of nowhere, and everyone is really, really good looking? Well....sort of! But in a Hulk-ified way, for sure!

You know, that blurb blows the whistle on one of comic fandom's best kept secrets. It's something that the mostly male demographic of comic readers dare not confess! We don't admit it to each other, and we especially don't talk about with non-comics fans! But while the action, fisticuffs and mayhem is what provides comics' instant appeal, it's the soap operatics that keep us involved and coming back for more. Comics are soap operas for little boys (and little boys at heart...and, hey, some little girls, too!!!)

But of all the comics to trumpet the words "Soap Opera?" The Hulk?!?! There were so many other Marvel comics that were more obvious choices to openly declare itself as Marvel melodrama. Avengers jumps right to the top of the list, as does Mighty Thor. But a comic surrounding the life of a giant, green monster? Well, let's meet some of the characters you'll find in the pages of this soap opera called Incredible Hulk:

BRUCE BANNER: This mild-mannered scientist is gripped with the double life of a raging beast, a double life which creates suspicion in all around him. And when his rage overtakes him, he changes into a giant, green, gamma-irradiated monster with the power of a thousand men. He is the strongest beast in human creation, with only one desire - to be left alone! Bruce Banner is...the Hulk!

BETTY ROSS: This brunette bombshell desperately loves the brainy Banner, with no idea how to explain his strange behavior and inexplicable absences, and no idea how to understand that despite all his eccentricities, she still loves him! More than he can know - more, perhaps, than he will ever know!

MAJOR GLEN TALBOT: This dashing young serviceman has no confusions about his identity or sense of self. No, he is sure about only two things! He will die, if need be, in patriotic service to his country, and he will show Betty Ross that he is worthy of her love. And he must win that love, no matter what cost!

GENERAL "THUNDERBOLT" ROSS: This cantankerous father of Betty will never understanding how she could love a milquetoast like Bruce Banner. Commanding brigades of young fighting men is a snap compared to managing the wild love his daughter feels for the scientist...the scientist he fears may be a traitor! Even more, the responsibility of destroying something that seems beyond destruction falls heavy on his shoulders. How a man like Thunderbolt Ross, with all his training, experience, and weapons of world-destroying might at his disposal, can come up empty so many times in pursuit of a single, solitary beast, is another thing beyond his understanding. If he stopped to reflect, it might drive him crazy, and so he rages on into the night....

RICK JONES: This young man, loyal to a fault on behalf of his best friend and savior Bruce Banner, cannot rest as long as Banner wanders the desert landscape, lost and bewildered by a world not designed to accomodate one such as he. Can a young man - nay, a boy! - such as he help balance the needs of his friend with the safety of the people of Earth who he might destroy?

THE LEADER: This mysterious and powerful protagonist to the Hulk! He too, with powers spawned by gamma-ray irradiation; he too, imbued with green-colored flesh; he too, with powers that could rule the world if he so chooses....And he so chooses! For the power of the Leader is not super strength, but a grave and terrible mind, a super-intellect the likes of which no man has ever before been endowed, matched with the arrogance to try to follow his every whim of dominance. And the Leader is smart enough to see that any proper dominator of the world must reckon first with the Hulk - to either make the green giant a tool of that domination, or to utterly destroy him as an enemy!

Whew! How's that for a cast of characters? Now I see why Stan put the hard sell on Incredible Hulk as a soap opera! You know, if they had packaged it as a weekday drama, sponsored by Palmolive or Ivory Soap, it couldn't have failed! But it wasn't a TV show (yet!) It was a comic book. And after being restored to monthly glory in the pages of Tales to Astonish, first as a backup to Giant-Man and the Wasp, and later the Sub-Mariner, the Hulk could once again return to the front of the line of Marvel's pantheon of super-heroes. The two artists who took hold of him in the first six comics that bore his name - Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko - are back in the stories reprinted in Hulk Masterworks Vol. 2. Steve pencils the first eight stories of Hulk's run, and Jack provides pencilled pages or layouts on the rest of the volume's stories.

But there's a ton of great artists beyond Jack and Steve to be found in this excellent book. John Romita pencils and inks a lone story, and Bill Everett climbs on board for some stunning linework in two stories. Gil Kane drops in to pick up the book one month, and Bob Powell nails down the chores on a couple issues. Mike Esposito is a stalwart on this run of comics, as he is either pencilling or inking about half the issues here. You might think that with no consistent artist on the book, that the material suffers. On the contrary, it makes for quite an interesting look through all the different takes of the Hulk, and with Jack providing layouts throughout the post-Ditko issues, there is a cohesive stability to the proceedings.

As far as what happens in each issue, well, why don't you read the soap opera, partner? The easy thing to do would be to tell you! But what's the fun in that?

-- by Gormuu

Issues Reprinted
Giant-Man from Tales to Astonish #59 and
Hulk from Tales to Astonish #60-79

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